In a shocking incident at Kharghar in Navi Mumbai, a caretaker of Purva play school, assaulted a 10-month-old girl. CCTV footage obtained by the police shows caretaker Afsana Sheikh hitting, throwing and kicking the child. The girl has sustained an injury on her head.

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The girl’s mother had dropped her off at the playschool and nursery around 8:30am on Monday before she left for work. When she returned to pick her up later that day, she was prevented from entering the centre.

“Then I called the owner of the centre from my office and asked if everything was okay. She replied that my baby was eating biscuits and that she was perfectly fine,” the mother told.

“When I managed to see her, I found she was lying unconscious,” she said. “Some parts of her body were swollen and I could see some bruises on her face. The owner told me that the baby hit herself with a toy. I was taken aback, but we came home that day.”

Later that night, the girl started vomiting and her parents took her to a hospital in Vashi.

“After examination, the doctors informed us that the baby was brutally assaulted. We then contacted the owner of the centre, but she behaved arrogantly and would not (accept) responsibility. We had then no option but to approach the police and narrate the entire incident,” she said.

The parents claimed the police were reluctant to register an FIR, and asked the parents to retrieve the CCTV footage from the centre.

“We sat at the centre from 8:30pm to 11pm, but the owner did not give us the footage. We finally managed to get the footage on Wednesday afternoon, wherein we saw the help throwing our baby around like a football,” she added.

The police registered a case against the owner of the centre and the help on Thursday and arrested them. They have booked them under Sections 325, 34 and 23 of the Indian Penal Code and were produced before a court, which granted bail to the owner of the facility.

“We registered the case before we saw the CCTV footage. We still have not seen the medical reports. Thus we registered the case under those sections of the IPC. Once we get all the details, we will add the relevant sections and if need be we will re-arrest the accused,” said Dilip Kale, senior police inspector of Kharghar police station.

The medical report revealed a brutal assault, resulting in bleeding in the girl’s brain. There was also a “suspicious fracture involving the occipital bone in the midline”, according to the report